Gallery 50

In the gallery below the museum restaurant, in the Van Beuningen-de Vriese Pavilion, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen presents a study collection with more than 1350 items of domestic metalwork from the museum’s permanent collection.

The display, which comprises more than 1350 objects, is grouped according to eight themes: materials and technology, kitchen utensils, tableware, items for pouring and drinking alcohol, tea and coffee, toys and clothing accessories made from a variety of metals, including iron, copper, bronze, tin, silver and gold. This study collection is displayed in the basement of the Van Beuningen-de Vriese Pavilion. On the ground floor of the Pavilion, as part of the museum restaurant, there is a monumental display case with kitchen utensils and tableware from the fifteenth century. And there is a 7-metre high skyscraper vitrine containing tables laid with tableware from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. The redesign of the Pavilion complements the display of 'The Design Collection', which opened at the beginning of 2013 on the ground floor of the Van der Steur Wing. The display features more than 600 objects from the museum’s collection.

Van Beuningen-de Vriese Pavilion

The display in the Pavilion is drawn from the Van Beuningen-de Vriese collection. Hendrik Jan van Beuningen (1920), a nephew of the man after whom the museum is named, who gave his name to the museum, donated a vast collection of pre-industrial domestic objects to the City of Rotterdam in 1990. The collection has been on loan to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen since 1983. One of the conditions of the donation was that a suitable gallery should be built to house the collection. In 1991 architect Hubert-Jan Henket designed a pavilion for the collection at the rear of the museum. The display in the basement is augmented with objects from other collections donated by private collectors, including Frederiks, Verster and Van der Schilden, and a long-term loan from the Stichting Het Nederlandse Gebruiksvoorwerp. Tin beakers are displayed alongside luxury silver equivalents, showing the development in functional design.

Smart Replicas

The project 'Smart Replicas' by designer Maaike Roozenburg is displayed in the museum restaurant on the ground floor of the Van Beuningen-de Vriese Pavilion. Inspired by the museum’s collection of pre-industrial design, Roozenburg has made ‘smart’ replicas of porcelain teacups from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries using a combination of the latest 3D printing technology and traditional craft techniques. She thus returns these museum objects to the status of functional daily tableware, albeit with a special history.

Volete vedere I miei cucciai usati 010802-010812

In the basement of the Pavilion you can see the extraordinary installation 'Volete vedere I miei cucciai usati 010802-010812' by artist Lam de Wolf. The work consists of the cut-out contours of approximately 8000 spoons used by the artist over a ten-year period (2002-2012): a fascinating spoon diary.

ALMA

Many of the objects displayed in the Pavilion can be found at collectie.boijmans.nl, the museum’s online collection database. A growing number of objects can also be found at alma.boijmans.nl, the museum’s website which links pre-industrial objects with their depictions in the visual arts.